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Follow UsThe Women's T20 World Cup 2024 is beginning after three days, and the biggest question remains the same - Can England, India or any other team challenge Australia?
There is a strong chance of the Australia vs. England final happening again, at least according to our Criclytics Women's T20 World Cup predictions. We used the Criclytics pre-match win prediction model, which was trained on historical data to simulate the tournament ten thousand times. The result of these simulations gives the potential outcomes of this year’s tournament.
The Ashes foes have met three times in the Women’s T20 World Cup finals, and Australia dominated England by winning all of them. Their most recent encounter during the final came six years ago, when Ashleigh Gardner won the Player of the Match award in that fixture for an all-round contribution of 33*(26) and 3/22 with the ball.
It is important to understand that these predictions are from the latest data of the Criclytics Rating System. If all the games are played now, this is how the model would see the results. These predictions will change throughout the tournament based on the actual match winner.
From these simulations, it comes as no surprise that Australia, India, England, and South Africa are favourites to make it to the semi-finals. Even though South Africa has won a lesser percentage of matches compared to West Indies since the previous edition of the Women's T20 World Cup, it is predicted to beat West Indies in the group stage and advance to the semi-finals.
The tournament will be played in the United Arab Emirates; matches are scheduled in Dubai and Sharjah. Both venues are classified as ‘bowling friendly’ according to the Criclytics Venue Rating System. These ratings are derived from the historical data related to venues from all the matches. The ratings are scaled between 0 and 1, with ratings closer to 1 indicating a batting-friendly venue and ratings closer to 0 indicating a venue that assists bowlers.
The team’s batting and bowling indexes are two critical variables in the Criclytics model. The team’s batting index is derived from aggregating the values from variables such as batting average, batting strike rate, batting performance index, batting form index, etc. The bowling index takes into account the economy rate, bowling strike rate, bowling performance index, bowling form index, etc. Teams with higher indices are generally strong contenders.
The model trains on the data from these variables, along with a few other important variables, to predict the group stage points table and their probability of advancing into the semi-finals.
One of the insights from the simulation is England's high probability of qualifying for the semi-finals. This is because of lesser competition among the teams in Group B compared to Group A, which Criclytics Elo Team ratings can measure. The average rating of all the teams in Group B is 103.1, compared to Group A’s average of 108.4, suggesting that Group A will have more competitive and closely fought matches. England, therefore, have the easiest path to top the group and make their way to the semi-finals.
Based on the model predictions, Australia and India will top Group A and Group B will be topped by England and South Africa. If these predictions come true, then the potential semi-final fixture will be between Australia (first in Group A) vs South Africa (second in Group B) and England (first in Group B) vs India (second in Group A). The probability of this semi-final fixture to happen is 13.53%, the highest among all the possible combinations, and it might change as the tournament progresses.
Based on the outcomes of semi-final predictions, the model predicts the semi-final winner and calculates each team’s probability of reaching the finals.
India's probability of making the finals is 12.28%, as they are expected to finish second in the group stage. If they manage to beat Australia in the group stage, they will top the table and can avoid England in the semi-final clash, thus improving their chances of making the finals.
Based on all the possible fixtures of the finals, the model predicts the probability of each team winning the title. Australia have historically dominated the Women’s T20 World Cup, and it will be the team to beat once again.
They have won the tournament six times, with two separate hat tricks of titles. Apart from the inaugural edition, Australia have always finished as either the winners or runners up.
No team in the past have ever won four titles in a row, and based on model predictions, England and India have a strong chance of preventing Australia from winning four titles in a row.
Speaking of how accurate these predictions are, we will have to wait till the final day of the tournament to see how things pan out.
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